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A drunk man looks at the Israeli flag – Stan Crooke

September 18, 2011 — Mira Vogel

Paul Donnachie and his friend, students at St Andrews University, turned up at Chanan Reitblat’s flat in a university hall of residence in the small hours of 12th March to check up on their friend, Reitblat’s flatmate. Donnachie saw an Israeli flag above Reitblat’s bed and flew into a rage. There followed a court case which saw Donnachie found guilty of racially aggravated breach of the peace (i.e. that he acted a manner which was racially aggravated and which caused, or was intended to cause, a person alarm or distress), sentenced to community service and fined. Through his tears Donnachie protested in all sincerity that he was an anti-racist. St Andrews was unimpressed and expelled him.

“Sentencing Donnachie, a history student and member of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, sheriff Charlie Macnair said: “This flag was his personal property. I consider that your behaviour did evince malice towards Mr Reitblat because of his presumed membership of Israel.

“I’m satisfied that you said Israel was a terrorist state and the flag was a terrorist symbol and I also hold that you said that Mr Reitblat was a terrorist.””

9 Responses to “A drunk man looks at the Israeli flag – Stan Crooke”

The whole piece is amazing account of the Livingstone Formulation going full weekend bender in Vegas with a blood-alcohol level literally blowing in the whole numbers (because with israel, all is possible)! Two dumb kids get sloppy drunk and endouche themselves on their retired drinking buddies roommate. And what happens? Hmmmm Get smashed? Be an }^{!}^ at O-dark-thirty, sober up enough to enter a favebook entry and your defense? Shriek Israel! Need help? You got it! The PSC co-alkies will come to your aid insisting that being disorderly AND plastered is OK as long as you are all Hezbollah and Hamas now. Then what? Oh what the heck, somewhere down below is China so let’s dig, dig, dig! Call him the Jew Zionist and suchbover and over and get huffy when your self professed lack of antimemitism is questioned. Claim remorse then get b!tchy and whinge at the thought that the fine will go to Israel. I suspect that as soon as the parties in question get out of the mental drunk tank, they will insist that it never happened and that this is a stawman built out of while cloth by David Hirsh.

And let’s not even wonder how the PSC usual suspects would behave if the beer bong and hose was on the other roof and a Palestinian flag and Palestinian supporter got identical treatment.

Among the many things that SPSC and Scottish Jews for a Just Peace (except that they have a strange view of what a just peace might look like: anything that Hamas & Hezbollah would accept?) appear to say and believe and that I find utterly mystifying are the following two:

“According to a letter from Dundee-based SJJP member Sarah Glynn, published in Fife’s “The Courier” newspaper, the verdict had “moved us a step closer to an Orwellian police state.”
Following the sentencing of Donnachie, Glynn told Reitblat’s family that their actions were “scandalous” and that “as Jews, you should be ashamed. This is devastating.” Just for good measure, she also told a rabbi who had given support to Reitblat that he was “destroying Judaism.””

Has Sarah Glynn ever actually _read_ “1984”? Does she have any idea what Orwell’s take on a totalitarian police state actually looks like? If her apparent beliefs are anything to go by, she and her ilk are the Orwellian types, rewriting history at the drop of a hat, and no doubt she would include the destruction of incriminating documents and the substitution of fabricated others supporting her view. Now _that’s_ Orwellian.

Equally mystifying is her rant at the Reitblat family. She hardly states what it is that the _family_ have done that is scandalous, unless it was to have actually produced a son who is appalling enough to study in Scotland and be a Zionist. Or does she mean their support of him, by appearing at the court? Perhaps she is being Orwellian again, in that she can believe what she likes, but no-one else, especially if they are Jewish, can believe anything different. It is clearly beyond her comprehension that anyone who believes something she doesn’t can actually be both sane and entitled to do so.

There are words for behaviour like this (other than those that denote a suspicion as to the mental balance of the person who so behaves) and they are “extremist”, “totalitarian”, “fascist”, “Stalinist”.

I’m sure other commenters can add a whole stream of further such terms.

And, btw, if she and her ilk wonder why George Orwell was so anti-Communist, she need read only “Homage to Catalonia”. I would be surprised if she has actually read either book.

Another thing for me to screed on about incoherently is how this likely would have gone down if there were NO politics involved (not just applying the cinderella test with her drinking from the other glass slipper). I can’t speak for the British views on college drinking but in the US the collective deans of students would drive Carrie Nation to drink with them implementing more and more zero tolerance policies from the vaguest of open container policies to enforcing “dry university” codes towards non-university activities off campus when students are involved. Even here though I suspect that an incident like this would get apologists wanting to revisit policies whose readings they either applauded or slept through. Once again, violate policies, especially those under the auspices of Campus Safety? Cry israel and you will get help, sometimes form the oddest places.

And here is a headline from JJfP,
“Oakland museum caves in to Jewish lobby to block Gazan kids’ art from view”
(They don’t mention whether this particular decision of the Jewish Lobby was or was not taken at a cemetry in Prague, nor whether the decision to take the Reitblach incident to court was also on the agenda).

And on a similar note, the 70 – 80% of Jews who see Israel as part of their Jewish identity does not exclude those many anti-ZIonist Jews who also see Israel as integral to their identity, albeit in a negative way.

JfJfP get it wrong, yet again. Why am I not surprised. The following link is to the eldersofziyon blog, a week or so back. They reproduce two sets of pictures, of which they say that one set, displayed a couple of years ago, are plainly children’s work (and labelled as by Gazan children); the other set are argued as probably by adults posing as children. Read the article to follow the cited art experts’ views (backed by the 5th comment in the list) that there are clear discernible differences between the two sets of pictures.

And that is why the Oakland Museum, following representations from local residents, Jewish and non-Jewish, that the current crop were not by children, decided to cancel the exhibition.

But don’t expect to hear that from JfJfP. The truth is too hard for them to bear, and it couldn’t possibly be (from their point of view) that their pals, the Hamas-dominated administration in Gaza could possibly and wittingly submit adult art purporting to be children’s art, all to score political points. Perish the thought.

Brian,
Apart from JJfP titling the article with antisemitic shorthand and failing to present the story in all its complexities and certain interests in Gaza pushing a latter day blood libel, what also bothers me is the artshow’s organisers and producers have wasted and exploited a serious opportunity to publicise conditions in Gaza.
Once again, JJfP have shown that they are more interested in attacking Jews in the diaspora than with what is going on in Israel and Gaza.
No wonder the vast majority of British Jews won’t go near them with a bargepole, despite the amount of support that they could garner on the question of the OT’s.
What a waste!

AO, JfJfP have no interest in actually publicising life as it is in Gaza or the West Bank, only in demonising Israel and Jews (re the Oakland museum issue). They are true believers and, as such, have no interest in convincing others through the power of logic, evidence and rationality, because they already the answer to anything anyone else might say. This is demonstrated when, despite calls for evidence, etc, on sites such as this one, they persist in repeating their assertions, maybe in different words, and may even change the subject or introduce new topics as though such matters somehow “prove” their point.

Anything which in factual, intellectual, terms refutes their world-view is just ignored. Which is the hallmark of the intellectual totalitarian throughout the ages.

In their particular case, they may well adopt this approach because, being conventionally left-wing, they wish to be on the same side as their “friends” in just who is designated the deprived of this worldmand thus worthy of their attention in fighting racism. It escapes their attention, in their desire to become accepted “as-a-jew”, that they therefore deny humanity to another group.

I intended to add to my previous comment that such people would find the following difficult to absorb. It’s the text of the 1922 San Remo Treaty or Agreement which is the cornerstone of the argument for a Jewish state in the Middle East. It’s an even stronger argument for the existence of Israel that the 1947 UN Resolution on which the Jewish Agency relied in May 1948.

Perhaps some members of the JfJfP and other similar organisations might like to deconstruct it for us? That is, actually _read_ it and then critique it, not just dismiss it as a load of 20th Century hogwash.